


don't look, don't flinch, don't know

by forsyte



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bondage, Dubious Consent, Gags, M/M, Office Sex, Overstimulation, Sensory Deprivation, Size Difference, elias does not have an especially good time in this, i will die before i specify a timeframe in anything, peter on the other hand...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/pseuds/forsyte
Summary: He lands on the floor on hands and knees, almost decides right then and there to forfeit."None of that, now," Peter reproaches, as if in reply to his unvoiced thoughts. The blindfold is dark, and he can see nothing. The blindfold is Dark, and he can See nothing. Elias feels the weight of the Eye prickling at him, fixed on him, with nothing to redirect that gaze towards save the velvet blackness of the fabric for the first time in a century.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 137





	don't look, don't flinch, don't know

**Author's Note:**

> _Don't look, don't flinch, don't know, don't go, don't leave me.  
>  Don't leave me, don't leave me._
> 
> _Something's so sick about this, my misery's so addictive..._  
>  "Northshore," Tegan and Sara

The traits under consideration when selecting his next vessel were, on the surface, basic. Easy to overwrite, preferably with no impressive accomplishments to their name, no close family, attractive in the unremarkable kind of way that would entice people to give his pet project their money. Height was a perk of his previous forms, but not a requirement.

An unforgivable oversight, he thinks, staring up. 

Peter Lukas, from his new perspective, looms large, towering over him as he frowns down. The shape of his thoughts are clear enough even to Elias, disoriented still as he is from the change; he's wondering whether the man before him really is the Head of the Institute. 

Peter startles, and some part of him fades at the edges, going hazy in every facet of Elias's vision. "It's rude to stare," he chides, the sense of him swirling in odd formations. Elias grits his teeth and refocuses, his Sight unsteady still. 

"My apologies," he says, because he has had a long time to learn how to be diplomatic under duress, and proffers his hand. "Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lukas." 

"Please," says Peter, gripping his hand with a disarming grin and giving it a sharp shake that Elias has to brace himself against, "call me Peter." The gesture is nominally unalarming, but only serves to emphasize the difference between them, how Peter could, if he cared to, send the fragile body he inhabits now staggering, how he could grip Elias by the collar and move him wherever he liked. It's not a question of human strength, the game they play, but it never hurts to be intimidating in more ways than one, and Peter knows this, grin for a moment widening to something predatory. Then the moment is gone. 

"Peter, then," Elias says, favoring him with an utterly insincere smile. "Please, sit down. I understand you're here to discuss the matter of the Lukas family's donations. Your family is, of course, a generous supporter of ours, and has been since our conception." 

—

Somewhen between then and now their customary wagers had shifted in tone. 

Peter pins him flat to the floor with one broad hand and grins like a cat in a room full of cream. His fingers nearly span the width of Elias's narrow chest. 

"Are—" His voice comes out weak, thready. He clears his throat, irritated at himself. "Are you _quite_ done accosting me, Peter?" 

"Mm. Now, that's an interesting question," says Peter, undoing his tie briskly. "I'm no disciple of the Ceaseless Watcher, Elias, but it doesn't _look_ like I'm done to _me._ Does it to you? I'd _hate_ to make you feel like your input isn't being heard, you know."

God help them all, someone had let the man sit in on a corporate seminar. Elias reaches up to shove his hand away and, smoothly as anything, inevitable, Peter grabs his wrists and holds them over his head. It's an easily-broken grip, of course, Peter's no skill with holds, and Elias has scheduling to do, and he should really be—

He should really— 

Peter's other hand flattens over his hips, presses down and rubs, and Elias arches into the pressure, reluctantly, and spares a moment to be grateful he pencilled in time for this. 

—

He lands on the floor on hands and knees, almost decides right then and there to forfeit. 

"None of that, now," Peter reproaches, as if in reply to his unvoiced thoughts. The blindfold is dark, and he can see nothing. The blindfold is Dark, and he can See nothing. Elias feels the weight of the Eye prickling at him, fixed on him, with nothing to redirect that gaze toward save the velvet blackness of the fabric for the first time in a century. A tremor flits through him, and he knows if his hands were planted on the floor he'd be shaking but — luckily or not, Peter has seen fit to position them so that his arm encircles Elias's chest, trapping his arms at his sides. He's curled around Elias, possessive, everywhere their bodies press together the jaws of an inescapable trap. Elias clenches his teeth so hard they groan and goes slack, relaxing in his hold. 

"Just like that," says Peter, brisk, and then, half to himself, "Mm, no, this still isn't right, why don't we try—" and he sits back on his haunches, drags Elias upright with him, forcing Elias to straddle him. He can feel the cool air of the room where his shirt is rucked up, where Peter is clumsily unzipping his fly wrong-handed, and he feels — exposed and raw with it, the target of a gaze he cannot return. Peter's chest presses against his back and then it doesn't, his beard scratching at Elias's neck the only split-second warning before his tongue laves just under his ear, and then his hand slides down and two broad fingers press against the front of Elias's briefs, a riot of sensation with nowhere to escape to and no way to predict it. Elias catches his breath, realizes he's panting and manages for one brief instant to wrest back control before Peter's teeth scrape jarringly against his neck and a noise catches in his throat—quiet, barely there, but Peter of course hears it, because he's listening for it. 

"Is that all it takes?" he muses, and sucks a mark into Elias's neck, lurid and bright and hell to cover up. It's the only sign he ever leaves of his presence. 

Elias is not so insecure in his grip of the situation between the two of them that he thinks he needs to posture. Peter is unused to having the upper hand in any interaction with those of their acquaintance, he supposes, and so he takes any chance he can to quip. It is—tedious, excruciatingly so in some respects. 

"Quiet, aren't you, now that those eyes of yours are out of the picture," Peter gloats, right on cue, and Elias is jolted out of his introspection by a familiar annoyance.

"Peter," he says, and deliberately grinds down. "I would never deprive you of your opportunity to— _hff_ —monologue. You do _so_ enjoy the sound of your own voice." If his voice thins in the middle of the sentence he can be forgiven, he thinks, lost as it is in Peter's own tiresome half-surprised groan. 

"One of us has to," Peter mutters, shifting behind him. Robbed of his sight, Elias is forced to lean back against Peter's chest, spatial cues filling in what his eyes can't. The creak of a drawer reassures him, although— 

"Second drawer from the top," he supplies helpfully. 

"Oh, I don't know," says Peter slowly, mock-considering (there's a metallic noise, is he turning something around in his hands?—), "this might warm you up some." 

Elias rapidly weighs his options, finds them wanting, regrets having to navigate this conversation bereft of sight and Sight. "Not effectively, it won't. Use your fingers." Encouraging him, and he'll be insufferable about it, but it's better than the alternative.

"Why, _Elias_ ," Peter says, the cloying cheer in his voice like nails on a chalkboard. The drawer sliding shut has a faint echo, the almost-imperceptible scrape of metal on wood, the handgun inside shifting just enough to be audible. Elias does not allow himself to slump forward in relief, but it's a close thing. "It's as if you _miss_ me."

"As if," Elias repeats after him, serene. Peter laughs, slicks up his hand—if the noises are any indication—and shoves it unceremoniously down between them. Elias clenches his fists, relaxes, lets Peter prod at him with a gloved finger. He idly checks on the Archives below—or tries to, met only with a yawning void. The burn of Peter’s finger pushing into him is visceral, almost unreally so, as if the sharpness of reality is an illusion. He tries again, an impulse too natural to curb, and the dark and sensation collide and amplify off of each other and he’s struggling, he realizes, in earnest, against the cruel blankness and how it forces him to inhabit only this room, only his body, how Peter shifts against him and inside of him. For the first time in long years Peter’s size ceases to be an annoyance, instead becoming a legitimate threat. Fear rises in his throat, stiffens his spine, and though he pushes it down he can feel it hang over him like a stormcloud. _Like fog,_ he thinks, aware of the irony. He could almost laugh.

 _“Elias,”_ says Peter in his ear, delighted. “You’ve never felt so _lonely_ before.” 

He should respond. Must, if he doesn't want Peter to press his advantage. Dismayed, he realizes he’s scattered, attention ineffectively splintered across his body, and with an effort of will he gathers himself and snaps, “No thanks to you, I'm sure,” and then his breath goes ragged as the pressure inside of him changes course. 

"Oh, _I'm_ not doing anything." Peter pauses. "Besides the obvious!" He chuckles. Elias rolls his eyes so hard they hurt. "No, you're used to checking in on your Institute whenever you want to, aren't you? Overseeing the people you think of as yours and their mundane suffering. But you can't see right now, can you?"

"Your considerable powers of observation are why I look forward to these encounters," Elias answers, strained. He could reach up and untie the blindfold. He has a _plan_ , he argues to himself, and it requires Peter to think him chronically unlucky and resigned to the consequences of such, _whatever_ they may be. The terms have historically been benign, or what passes for it in their circles, and even now he doubts he's genuinely in danger from Peter. Mere doubt, though, doesn't hold a candle to _knowing—_

"You don't need to talk, you know," Peter responds pleasantly, derailing his thoughts. "In fact, I think I'd really prefer you didn't." 

"You, thinking?” Elias murmurs. “My, that’s new. Don't strain yourself on my behalf, Peter." 

"That's enough from you," Peter snaps, pulling out abruptly. The arm wrapped around Elias tightens; a moment later the wet smack in the vicinity of the garbage can signifies the trajectory of the glove. Cloth rustles overhead. His abandoned tie, from the direction of the sound, and Elias stiffens, realizing what exactly Peter intends to do. 

"Open that mouth of yours, would you?" Peter asks, and Elias snorts despite himself. Years upon decades of power and the man still can't give a direct order. Mordechai Lukas must be rolling in his grave right now. The indignity of _obeying_ him, even temporarily, is galling, but—

"Oh, don't be a sore loser, Elias," Peter sighs, mock-disappointed at his silent refusal. "Really, you don't have to make things so difficult for yourself." His hand comes to rest on Elias's shoulder, weighing him down, fingers just barely caressing his throat. "I _know_ you can be more graceful about it." 

—needs must. Elias lets out an exasperated breath and doesn't protest the silk that slides over his tongue. He's weathered less subtle threats, surely, though he finds himself hard-pressed to recall _many._ Peter ties the improvised gag behind his head tightly—double-knotting it, how thorough of him—and Elias very carefully does not think about how precarious his position is, how he has let himself be made defenseless. The whiplash of familiar irritation and entirely unfamiliar anxiety that has been this encounter in entirety thus far is tiring enough without dwelling on such details.

"Much better," Peter says, considering, "although I still think it's missing something."

He takes hold of Elias's wrists and tugs them up behind his back, and Elias does not fight, considers and discards physical struggle as beneath him and useless besides, regardless of the dread that fills him at the motion. Slowly, luxuriously so, _savoring the moment,_ if Elias is any judge (of _all_ the times for Peter not to be in his characteristic rush to come and go—), he wraps them round and round with—something.

The binding is tight, biting into his wrists and forearms, and has a strange chill about it; he recognizes all at once the chain from the antique sailor's whistle he bestowed upon the Lukas family a generation ago. Naturally. He flexes against it, finds unsurprisingly that it lacks the give it should have, and resigns himself to aching arms for the time being. A small discomfort, in the long term.

"Perfect," Peter says, slipping on a fresh glove, fastidious as ever. His other hand comes to rest on Elias's hip. Elias does not shiver at the casual reminder of his size, almost certainly deliberate, but he can't help the huff of air that escapes him as two fingers push back into him, broad and invasive, and he stares, wide-eyed and unseeing, into the black of the blindfold and struggles to keep his breathing even. It hurts, and he twitches away helplessly, even as the hand on his hip presses down, keeping him in place. Worse than the pain, though, more insidious, is the urge to push back, the bright sparks of pleasure that force his back to arch independent of his will. Peter scissors his fingers slowly, mercilessly, and with the gag in place Elias can't swallow the sound he makes, quiet and pathetic. His control is slipping; being anchored in a body in a way he hasn't experienced since before he could See, a prisoner of his own nerves sending shocks across his mind, is wreaking havoc on long-lived walls, tearing down the foundations of his hard-won composure. He can feel himself trembling.

"You've been holding out on me," Peter says. "Have you forgotten what being alone feels like? I can't imagine." He flexes his fingers, adds thoughtfully, "Have you been spending time in other people's heads during our past encounters, then, or just watching to see what I was going to do? That’s cheating, you know." 

Elias cannot answer, is secretly, shamefully grateful for the gag giving him an excuse, thoughts fractured between the taste of damp silk and a hollow where there should be knowledge and Peter's touch, and above it all the stare of the Eye on him from the outside, newly alien. 

"Doesn't really matter, I suppose," continues Peter, left hand tracing circles into Elias's thigh through his trousers absent-mindedly. Innocent as it seems, the movement just barely shifts the fabric across his cock. He fights himself, has half a mind to lean into it even as he knows and fears that Peter will notice. “Either way, you’re almost tolerable like this.” 

Elias makes an aggrieved noise through the gag before he can stop himself, the kind of exhale that communicates how much of a waste of time he considers this whole thing. He’s used it on Peter before, to great effect. This time, though, silenced and blind and hyperaware of his body, of how he knows from past experience that Peter thinks of him, half-disdainfully and half with an awful excitement, as _delicate,_ how truly, wholly powerless he is—he curses his own pride as soon as he does, braces himself—

“Terribly sorry if I’m boring you, Elias,” Peter says in chipper tones, not quite masking his annoyance, “but you lost, and I’m enjoying myself. I’m sure you understand the value of patience?” His hand moves, cupping Elias lightly through his briefs while he pulls his fingers out, thrusts them back in roughly. The contrast is dizzying, disorienting, and Elias bites down on the silk of his own tie, strains against his bonds until the chain leaves imprints in his flesh, just to give himself a point of reference that isn’t the sickening lightning-sizzle of pain-pleasure, unbearable, and he tries, again, to see anything, be anywhere that isn’t the body he’s trapped in. He fails, inevitably, leans away from the pressure inside of him in vain, pushing himself against Peter’s other hand, which slips into his briefs, wraps around him and swipes a thumb across his head, as Peter twists his fingers and makes him see stars. Just under the surface he is horrified at himself and at this body for betraying him, at his impotent shaking, the way his breaths fray at the edges and leave his throat as almost-whines, at this deplorable show of weakness which he is _still powerless to stop_ —

Peter, true to his word, keeps going, long past his customary half-hearted preparation. It feels, at times, unending. Elias pulls himself back together, clenches his teeth and leans into what pain remains, flinching, and then Peter slows down, skims his massive hand over Elias’s by-now-exposed thighs and finds where to position his fingers so that the tiniest crook of them elicits a gasp and _presses,_ torturously slow and deep, and the last of the hurt Elias clings to is washed away by the deluge of sensation, taking his resistance with it. Underneath the overstimulated shudder of what feels like every muscle in his body Elias can feel a more familiar tension building, white-hot coils of unwilling pleasure winding tighter and tighter; his breaths aren't _frayed_ anymore so much as they're _torn to shreds._ He welcomes it, dreads it, awaits Peter’s undoubtedly insufferable response with a dull sort of anticipation even as his nerves sing, discordant, searing vivid lines into his field of vision,

and then Peter stops, pulls away, goes to paw through his desk in search of something. The sudden absence of touch leaves him reeling as surely as the overabundance, and for a moment he rolls his hips into thin air, rutting against nothing at all. 

“So impatient,” Peter chides, paying more attention than Elias expects and certainly more than he welcomes.  
“Second drawer from the top,” Elias mutters into the gag, feeling light-headed and desperate in a way he doesn’t want to consider for any length of time. It comes out muffled, but either he’s coherent enough or Peter’s search is successful despite himself, because not a minute later there are broad hands shoving his trousers down and Peter's pushing into him with a huff of satisfaction, dragging his hips back until he's firmly seated and holding him there, just long enough to make a point. Elias concedes to him a legitimate victory; it is a remarkably unsubtle gesture, but given that he's barely holding in check the impulse to needle Peter until he deigns to move—whether to pull out entirely or to reignite that white-hot tension, he can't quite find it in himself to differentiate; anything but this immovable solid intrusion that isn't nearly enough and is entirely too much—it's brutally effective. As is, he squirms slightly, breath hitching, and Peter’s hands tense on his thighs. He can feel Peter’s eyes on him, the ice-chill of his gaze, unseen and seeing. Revealed secrets, he thinks, resentful, are supposed to be _his_ due.

“My turn, now that you’ve had your fun,” says Peter, and without warning he rises to his knees, sending Elias tumbling forward off his lap with a startled yelp. Instinctively he tries to arrest his fall, manages only to wrench his arms against the chain, has a fraction of an instant to feel his stomach drop in horrified anticipation—and he’s caught by a hard grip around his shoulder, his head snapping down as his momentum comes to an abrupt stop. Peter’s other hand never leaves his hip, his cock still lodged deep, and, tense from his near-floor experience, Elias can feel every agonizing centimetre of it in vivid detail.

“How careless of me!” Peter exclaims, tone fairly dripping with sincere concern, as if he hadn’t planned exactly this, as if Elias can’t hear how false the emotion rings, as if he doesn’t _know_ that Elias can see right through him. He lowers Elias gently, until his face rests against the floor, hips canted up and neck bent at an unforgiving angle. It is _very_ uncomfortable, and will only be more so when Peter starts moving. Elias grits his teeth, pressing his tongue hard against his tie, tells himself he is relieved that at the very least it will be easier to focus on the parts of this that are wholly unpleasant and suppresses the ache in him that wants otherwise. 

Peter pulls out, drives back in with a grunt, and Elias’s entire body weight rocks against the precarious brace of his cheekbone, his neck creaking. He hisses through clenched teeth, trying vainly to shift, shuffle his knees back, if nothing else, to soften the blow—but Peter might as well be a bulwark behind him, and as he thrusts in again he deepens the angle.

 _“Peter,”_ Elias snarls, mangled by fabric, and he pauses, with a put-upon sigh.

“Is something the matter, Elias?” he says. The exasperation in his voice is an overwrought parody of itself, but Elias has no doubts as to its authenticity.

 _“Yes,”_ he spits, working his sore jaw against the gag. “If you haven’t _noticed_ — _”_ He cuts off with a gasp of pain as Peter rolls his hips again, almost idly. 

“Sorry, I can’t—quite hear you,” says Peter, breath unsteady. His tone is nowhere near apologetic, hovering instead near gleeful sadism. “You’ll h-have to speak up.” His next thrust is rougher, and Elias nearly bites his tongue, going rigid. “Asking nicely might help,” Peter adds pointedly. 

“Peter,” Elias tries again, muffled, pain coloring his voice in place of anger. Peter rocks into him again, but softer, shallower. A hint, and one with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, _really._ He shuts his blindfolded eyes, counts to ten rapidly, and says “ _please,”_ high-pitched and wounded.

Peter’s breath leaves him in a shaky sigh. “ _Ohhh,_ I could listen to that for _ages,”_ he says, wistful. “Do it again, will you?” 

His neck hurts. “Please,” he says again, knowing he sounds desperate, scared, even, letting the anguish seep into his voice. “Peter, _please_ —”

Peter groans low in his chest and wraps a hand around his arms, lifting his face off the ground. Elias slumps in his grasp, dead weight. “If I _must._ You have _such_ a talent, Elias, it really is a shame I don’t hear it put to use more often.”

Elias doesn’t answer past a shiver of protest, playing the wreck. It’s not much of an act; he spent a minute or two, if that, pressed into the floor, and he’d be feeling the soreness from it for the next week were he anything close to mortal. 

“Suppose I have to prop you up now,” Peter complains. “The things I do, honestly, Elias. I’m going soft in my old age.” Elias barely swallows a laugh, wincing as it scrapes across his throat—he isn’t particularly interested in a repeated demonstration of the limitations of human anatomy, even in the face of Peter’s remarkable aptitude for hilarity. Old, _honestly._ He’s barely an adult, compared to those few of his peers that still live. 

A harsh scraping noise, wood against the floor, rings out, and a moment later a hard surface insinuates itself under his chest, belonging to the chair on the other side of his desk. He suspects, confirmed when Peter sets him down and he allows his head to loll forward, that Peter has set him down so that his face will press against the slats in the back. Charming of him. Elias manoeuvres until he can rest his cheek flat on the seat and enjoys the brief respite. 

"God, you're fussy," groans Peter, on cue. A hand threads itself through Elias's hair, bunches into a fist, proprietary, taking every chance to remind him of how little choice he has in the matter. 

The chair under him is a relief, the pressure of his own body grounding, as Peter pushes back into him, settles into a rhythm that leaves him panting helplessly. All too quickly the familiar coiling tension returns, fills the empty dark behind his eyelids with flashes of light and a mindless, shivering pleasure, and it builds on itself, poisons the soreness in him with honey-sweet want, and he leans into it as much as he can, so violently unused to the way it feels all-consuming, how it shakes him right down to the bones with the strength of it. There is a kind of freedom, he recognizes, barely cognizant as he is, in the hands holding him down and the cloth in his mouth, the binds that lock his arms together, the way he cannot move or speak or see and so all he has left is the choice whether to fight or to surrender as gracefully as he can. At last he relaxes, as much as he can with the twisting ache tightening every muscle and driving him towards the inevitable peak, and gives up what last vestige of self-control he has, and tips over the edge.

There is no moment of coming back to himself. He never leaves in the first place, shockingly, vividly aware of every second of that agonizing ecstasy as it shudders through him like a supernova, far stronger than it has any right to be, a bright dying, as he curls into himself, his breath shallow and half-sobbing. As it fades, slowly, as Peter still drives into him, the aftershocks wringing unwilling whimpers from his throat.

Peter doesn't _stop,_ and his movement is unforgiving friction against nerves already oversaturated, far past feeling anything so simple and clean as _good,_ has instead skipped straight to a raw kind of pain that punches straight through to pleasure again even as Elias twitches with every stroke and digs his short nails into his palms for some kind of relief. He's never been one for a long afterglow, can feel the strain in his arms from their unnatural position and the ache in his chest from supporting his weight against the hard seat and the constant, prickling blindness, cut off from what is his by right, but under it all is the sharp inescapable burn, wrecking him all over again. The exhaustion he feels is ancient, forgotten, a relic of two bodies ago somehow dredged up by, of all people, a sea captain with an excess of hubris, an unfortunately direct line to the Lukas finances, and, most pertinently, far more stamina than Elias would prefer. Too overwhelmed to regain control of himself, he has just enough processing power left to him to regret the low gasps and flinching whines that Peter draws from him and resent the man's laughter, his obvious delight in seeing Elias stripped bare of his composure and writhing helplessly under him.

Distantly, a clock ticks. Minutes pass, each one stretching on for an eternity, marked by Peter's hard grip on his thigh, by the tears that soak into his blindfold, pure reflex, a symptom of his body trying to make sense of what is too much to bear. The temperature of the room drops and the chain, cold to begin with, burns like ice where it touches his arms. Had he his sight he knows it would be obscured by the clammy fog that settles against his skin, seeps into his head and weighs him down with despair, a gift from Peter's patron. He shouldn't be remotely susceptible, wouldn't be affected under normal circumstances, much less fighting a dreary kind of resignation, but without the clarity of purpose, the burning gaze he has become so used to, the ability to throw it off without a second thought is lost to him. 

Peter plants one hand on the chair next to him and leans down, puffs of air cold against the back of Elias's neck as he pants, his grip tightening, pressing closer to Elias as his control erodes. He shoves in, hard, and grinds, and the chair creaks in protest as Peter braces himself through his own climax. 

He only stays there, bent over Elias in some parody of a protective gesture, until his breathing evens out, and then he hoists himself upright with a groan, finally, _finally_ pulls out, tosses the condom in the trash, and stands up. 

"Been nice seeing you, Elias, but places to be, things to do, I'm sure you understand," he says. Fabric, likely the heavy dark blue coat he wears chiefly for the image it gives him, slides across the desk, accompanied by the sound of scattering pens. Elias idly speculates that on the day Peter shows the faintest genuine consideration for another's space Hell will freeze over. 

"Didn't break you, I hope," Peter says cheerfully, much closer, and a hand brushes against his arms where the end of the whistle's chain dangles. "Until next time!" 

And then the chain is gone, and the fog, and so is he, leaving Elias slumped over a chair with his tie in his mouth, every bit of exposed skin alight with a feeling like static. 

He fumbles for the blindfold, grasping it with numb and shaking fingers, and pulls it off. Immediately he is assaulted by knowledge—the receptionist is thinking longingly about the nature documentary waiting back at her flat. The Head Archivist has not returned. Nearby a burning book sends smoke spiralling off into the blue sky—it is not one of his, or he would find the perpetrator. He shoves a hand into his hair—already unacceptably disarrayed—and tries to focus. (Leslie, in accounting, wonders whether any shop within three blocks sells a decent sandwich.) A feeling like a migraine building lances through his skull, joins the chorus of his arms and hands and knees in screaming the discomforts of having a body which is still miserably, unavoidably human, which has been pushed to the brink without warning. (A stray cat crouches over a pigeon, staring at a man who has chosen this alley for a smoke break. The man is not aware of this; he is wishing for rain.) After spending so long blindfolded, tied down, the release that should be relief feels instead as though he is an eye staring directly into the sun. 

Tensing in expectation of pain will make it worse, he knows. He shuts his eyes tight, opens them, reorienting himself to the light. He rubs his arms carefully, raises and lowers his aching shoulders. He meticulously reorders the images in his head. 

Slowly, painfully, he hauls himself up. There is no one around to see the Head of the Institute as he winces, gingerly gathers his clothing and redresses, smoothing out the creases as best he can. He considers the tie, gives it up as a lost job. There is a spare in another desk drawer, and he ties it, fiddling with the knot far longer than he usually does, his hands protesting, until it lies immaculate around his neck once more. He settles into the chair behind his desk, considers the blindfold still laying across from him, an innocuous strip of fabric. 

Idly, he wonders if it would work to sever Peter's connection to his patron as well. There is another banquet coming up which he will be expected to attend, and it is not the kind of company which will raise their eyebrows at the son of the Lukas family trailing along behind him, even with a thin band of black cloth around his eyes, save to wonder what brought him into polite company. There will be hours of conversation, surely, and none of it the kind which one can easily excuse oneself from. A delicate balance to strike, certainly, because he needs Peter to accept the next wager he proposes, and the next, cannot scare him badly enough that he flees off into the mist with his tail between his legs, but to go through that again— 

No. Better to give Peter a motivation to suggest they keep other powers out of their bets.

He retrieves a pen, plucks out a sheet of blank intake paperwork from the stack bound for Artifact Storage. The test results will decide his plans for the thing. He ignores the irrational desire to burn it, for the time being. It could still prove useful to him.

Lifting his pen from the signature that loops elegantly across the page—Elias Bouchard's messy chicken scratch having long since been consigned to the past—he stands. There is no one in his office to see him as he makes his way to the window, stares out over the street and watches the passers-by as they go about their lives, blind to the machinations of the things that hang above their heads. A young man pauses on the steps of the Magnus Institute, puts his hand on the shoulder of his companion, leans in to offer reassurance that will not help. 

There is always work to do. For the moment he forgoes it, watching, and resolves not to lose the next wager.

**Author's Note:**

> i headcanon peter as a scrawny, rangy jackal of a man, but i saw a piece of fanart wherein he was much, much larger than elias, and my id went "hey, we're writing fic about this now." Dark blindfold capable of obscuring elias's Sight shamelessly stolen from [Time Enough For Counting](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748884), a fic which is, honestly, way better at being smutty.  
> sincere thanks to everyone across multiple discord servers who suffered through me whining about how writing is hard, and especially to dysprositos, chief enabler and person who named the damnéd thing. couldn't have done it without y'all.  
> love this? hate it? have northshore by tegan and sara stuck in your head now? same. comments section below, or yell at me on [tumblr.](https://morguecrow.tumblr.com)


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